Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey therein
Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm
Speaker 1: an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the tech
Speaker 1: are you. It's time for the tech news for the
Speaker 1: week ending on Friday, April nineteenth, twenty twenty four, and
Speaker 1: let's get to it now. If you've been listening to
Speaker 1: tech Stuff for just a bit, you know I've talked
Speaker 1: about the issue of Chinese hackers having infiltrated various American networks,
Speaker 1: and those include networks that belong to critical infrastructure. So
Speaker 1: this first news item, I would argue, is not really
Speaker 1: new news, but it is important. In fact, I've even
Speaker 1: talked specifically about Christopher Ray, the director of the Federal
Speaker 1: Bureau of Investigation, warning us about Chinese infiltration of these systems.
Speaker 1: I talked about that earlier this year, but Ray and
Speaker 1: his warnings are back in the news because he gave
Speaker 1: a speech this week at Vanderbilt University. In that speech,
Speaker 1: among other things, he said, Chinese agents have breached systems
Speaker 1: ranging from telecommunications networks to power grid networks and tons
Speaker 1: of other stuff as well, and that China is essentially
Speaker 1: just biting its time, and eventually it will use this
Speaker 1: presence in these networks to wreak havoc on the United States.
Speaker 1: Ray called this initiative volt Typhoon. He said, that's the
Speaker 1: name of this whole project of infiltration, and it said
Speaker 1: it was the product of the Chinese government. Now, China's
Speaker 1: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for what it's worth, has said no, no, no,
Speaker 1: no no, that's a criminal hacker group and it has
Speaker 1: no connection to the government. Now what is the truth?
Speaker 1: Beats me? But a vault Typhoon is, as the government
Speaker 1: spokesperson had said, the efforts of a ransomware group. It
Speaker 1: does seem odd to me that the group hasn't, you know,
Speaker 1: demanded a ransom. Ransomware only makes sense if you alert
Speaker 1: your victim to the fact that they've been breached and
Speaker 1: then demand a ransom. If not, then it's not ransomware.
Speaker 1: So if in fact it's a result of a criminal
Speaker 1: ransomware group, why has this group not done that? What
Speaker 1: is it waiting for now? It could be that it's
Speaker 1: waiting for the time to cause the maximum amount of
Speaker 1: chaos by striking all these various targets simultaneously, because maybe
Speaker 1: that way, they'll net a much larger payoff. If everything
Speaker 1: looks like it's going haywire, then maybe that would create
Speaker 1: the situation where you get paid millions of dollars in
Speaker 1: order to stop. But whether that's the truth or whether
Speaker 1: China itself is actually behind the attacks, it's seriously bad
Speaker 1: news for America. It could mean that America has some
Speaker 1: really rough times to look forward to. And the thing is,
Speaker 1: we don't know when that will happen, only that because
Speaker 1: it can happen, it will eventually happening. Of China. We
Speaker 1: have more news in the story of how the US
Speaker 1: government is going after TikTok. When last we left this tale,
Speaker 1: the US House of Representatives had voted in favor of
Speaker 1: either forcing Byte Dance, which is TikTok's Chinese parent company,
Speaker 1: to sell TikTok off to someone else, notably someone not
Speaker 1: considered a quote unquote for an adversary by the good
Speaker 1: old US of A, or they would face a nationwide
Speaker 1: ban on the app. And I said it seemed less
Speaker 1: likely that the US Senate would actually push this bill
Speaker 1: through into being signed into law. Then we had one.
Speaker 1: US Senator, Maria Cantwell, suggests a change to the House
Speaker 1: bill to extend the deadline for byteedance to comply from
Speaker 1: six months to a year, and that helped move the
Speaker 1: needle a little bit. Some other Senators started to be
Speaker 1: perhaps a little more comfortable expressing support for such a
Speaker 1: possible bill in the Senate, and that might be because
Speaker 1: that timeline also pushes the actual sale date to after
Speaker 1: the US elections this year. And now things are getting
Speaker 1: even murkier because the House of Representatives, after making that
Speaker 1: alteration to the bill and extending the deadline, have lumped
Speaker 1: the TikTok stuff in with a larger package of bills
Speaker 1: relating to foreign aid to Ukraine and Israel, which is
Speaker 1: kind of sneaky, but it's very much typical in US
Speaker 1: politics anyway. There are main questions as to whether such
Speaker 1: a law would even be constitutional, and there is no
Speaker 1: question at all that TikTok would immediately challenge such a
Speaker 1: law in court in an effort to force an official
Speaker 1: decision as to whether the law is valid or not.
Speaker 1: And behind all of this is a teeny tiny but
Speaker 1: lingering problem that the United States doesn't actually have evidence
Speaker 1: that TikTok has been acting as a kind of like
Speaker 1: surveillance tool for the Chinese government. Now, that is an
Speaker 1: issue because the whole crux of the bill argues that
Speaker 1: there are these dangers of having a data howard app
Speaker 1: owned by a foreign adversary. That's the reason the bill
Speaker 1: has been written, at least according to the language of
Speaker 1: the bill. Now, of course, there are some leaders who
Speaker 1: have plenty of different objections to TikTok that have very
Speaker 1: little to do with whether or not Chinese officials have
Speaker 1: access to the data. For the record, I don't like TikTok,
Speaker 1: and it is very true that China does have laws that,
Speaker 1: if those laws are enforced, compel citizens and Chinese companies
Speaker 1: to gather intelligence on behalf of the Chinese government. However,
Speaker 1: I'm also a stickler for proof and evidence, So just
Speaker 1: saying that something could happen is different than saying something
Speaker 1: has happened, And you can't, in my mind, punish people
Speaker 1: for something that could happen, Like that's ridiculous, right. I mean,
Speaker 1: everyone could potentially commit a crime, but we don't just
Speaker 1: go and arrest everyone ahead of time. In order to
Speaker 1: avoid that, we wait till someone has committed a crime.
Speaker 1: Then there's the legal system gets in so This whole
Speaker 1: thing doesn't sit very well with me. Even though I
Speaker 1: am no fan of TikTok, I'm also not a fan
Speaker 1: of the government taking action against a perceived threat that
Speaker 1: has not been proven to actually be a threat. So yeah,
Speaker 1: still a complicated, big old mess, and we still don't
Speaker 1: really know where it's going to go. It just seems
Speaker 1: now that it is more likely to get passed into
Speaker 1: law than it would have been, say, a month ago.
Speaker 1: So maybe it turns out that by the end of
Speaker 1: this month we're going to see a law that's going
Speaker 1: to either compel byt Dance to sell off TikTok or
Speaker 1: to face a national ban, and then that'll precipitate all
Speaker 1: these other legal actions. I'm sure. Now I've got a
Speaker 1: few AI stories today. First up is a pretty concerning one.
Speaker 1: The US Air Force, in partnership with DARPA, which is
Speaker 1: the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, have announced that an
Speaker 1: AI powered X six ' too a Vista air araft,
Speaker 1: has engaged in simulated dog fights against actual human pilots. Now,
Speaker 1: to be clear, the Vista is a real aircraft. It
Speaker 1: is derived from the F sixteen D fighting Falcon aircraft,
Speaker 1: and last year Lockheed Martin issued a press release saying
Speaker 1: that an AI piloted Vista aircraft had been flying under
Speaker 1: AI control for more than seventeen hours. Now, we're talking
Speaker 1: about simulating air to air combat with actual human pilots,
Speaker 1: and during the dogfights, human pilots were also on the
Speaker 1: Vista aircraft, so it wasn't like it was just robot
Speaker 1: controlled and there were no other people. There were humans
Speaker 1: in the cockpit as well. They were there to intervene
Speaker 1: if it were necessary, but it turned out not to be,
Speaker 1: so the AI piloted the Vista within human safety norms.
Speaker 1: Now that is interesting to point out because if you
Speaker 1: think about it, a jet being controlled by AI would
Speaker 1: not necessarily have to obey the safety norms because you
Speaker 1: don't have a human pilot who's going to black out
Speaker 1: if the aircraft engages in maneuvers that would put too
Speaker 1: much force upon the humans inside. So it's possible for
Speaker 1: an AI aircraft to do stuff that human piloted aircraft
Speaker 1: just can't do. It's also possible for an AI powered
Speaker 1: aircraft to rip a plane apart by trying to make
Speaker 1: it do something that it just physically cannot do. Anyway,
Speaker 1: we're still quite a ways out from aircraft that will
Speaker 1: fly and engage in actual combat all by themselves. But
Speaker 1: this is a big step closer to that, and that's
Speaker 1: something that concerns a lot of people, not just in
Speaker 1: the tech field, well beyond that, including me. I mean,
Speaker 1: I really worry about how quickly a nation might enter
Speaker 1: into armed conflict if they can do so just by
Speaker 1: sending in the robots. I worry that would lead to
Speaker 1: a future that would be more violent, with more civilian casualties.
Speaker 1: But then I also read a lot of science fiction
Speaker 1: where this kind of stuff has been talked about ad nauseum,
Speaker 1: moving to a less violent but arguably equally as scary
Speaker 1: AI story. Meta recently released an early version of its
Speaker 1: latest large language model, which is dubbed Lama three. It
Speaker 1: also released an AI image generator that, according to Reuter's quote,
Speaker 1: updates pictures in real time while users type prompts end quote. Now,
Speaker 1: that last bit is quite impressive. I've used image generators
Speaker 1: just to kind of test them out, and they take
Speaker 1: a prompt typically and usually it calculates a response that
Speaker 1: takes between thirty seconds to a minute before showing you
Speaker 1: an image. So to have a model capable of making
Speaker 1: dynamic changes as you type in new edits tier prompt.
Speaker 1: That's really impressive, and you could also see how someone
Speaker 1: could use a tool like that to create an image
Speaker 1: and then refine it or alter it until they got
Speaker 1: something close to what they wanted, and that you could
Speaker 1: see as being an enormous concern to you know, actual
Speaker 1: human artists. There are also still massive questions about how
Speaker 1: companies like Meta are actually training these AI tools to
Speaker 1: begin with, including potentially the use of other people work
Speaker 1: without their consent. Meta's messaging around AI is similar to
Speaker 1: what you would see with companies like Microsoft or open ai,
Speaker 1: and to be clear, open ai is heavily funded by Microsoft,
Speaker 1: namely that AI tools are there to help take certain
Speaker 1: tasks off your hands and that future versions of this
Speaker 1: tool will allow for things like making detailed, multi step
Speaker 1: plans that actually make sense. So I guess it all
Speaker 1: depends on where you come down on generative AI as
Speaker 1: to whether you see this as a positive step toward
Speaker 1: greater productivity or a more concerning step toward copyright infringement
Speaker 1: and displacement of people that kind of thing. Okay, we're
Speaker 1: going to take a quick break to thank our sponsors.
Speaker 1: When we come back. I've got some more news stories
Speaker 1: to talk about. Okay, we're back. I still have another
Speaker 1: AI story here. So Microsoft also introduced new AI tool
Speaker 1: this week and it's getting a lot of buzz. It's
Speaker 1: called Vasa one Vasa one, and this is an AI
Speaker 1: image to video tool, which means you can feed it
Speaker 1: a still image like a photograph in other words, and
Speaker 1: you can give it an audio clip, and then Vasa
Speaker 1: one will create a fully animated video incorporating those two things.
Speaker 1: So if you took a selfie, let's say, just you
Speaker 1: take a selfie and then you upload audio from some
Speaker 1: other source, like maybe it's Alec Baldwin's monologue in Glengarry
Speaker 1: Glenn Ross, well, Vasa one would manipulate your selfie image
Speaker 1: so it looked like video of you explaining that second
Speaker 1: place is a set of steak knives and third blazes,
Speaker 1: you're fired. Or as Daniel John of creative block dot
Speaker 1: Com puts it, quote, it's capable of creating deep fake
Speaker 1: videos based on a single image end quote. That being said,
Speaker 1: Microsoft has said that the Vasa one is an internal
Speaker 1: tool and it's being used for research purposes and the
Speaker 1: company has no intention of releasing it as a product,
Speaker 1: so folks like you and me wouldn't be able to
Speaker 1: get our grubby little hands on it unless you happen
Speaker 1: to work for Microsoft in their AI research department. That is,
Speaker 1: I've seen some short animations of this thing in action.
Speaker 1: I do find it unsettling, but then again, I'm easily unsettled.
Speaker 1: Now let us turn to the matter of bots. Those
Speaker 1: little automated critters that typically rank lower on our robo
Speaker 1: terror meters than AI powered fighter jets. Are generative AI
Speaker 1: determined to turn creativity into an algorithm. There's still something
Speaker 1: we got to deal with. So Sean Mitchell wrote a
Speaker 1: piece that I saw in Security Brief, which is a
Speaker 1: New Zealand publication, and it's titled half of online traffic
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty four generated by Bots report fines. So
Speaker 1: that report comes from a cybersecurity company called Thales, and
Speaker 1: it said that forty nine point six percent of all
Speaker 1: Internet traffic is from bots forty nine point six and
Speaker 1: that this is a continuation of a trend, and it's
Speaker 1: been going on for years. So like each year we've
Speaker 1: seen that trend higher. That means that perhaps next year
Speaker 1: we could see more traffic generated by bots on the
Speaker 1: Internet than by actual human beings. You know, bots will
Speaker 1: be making content for other bots. Eventually the rest of
Speaker 1: us will just disconnect and go for a walk or something,
Speaker 1: or maybe read some poetry, or probably probably just stay
Speaker 1: online and complain about how ding Dan cluttered everything is.
Speaker 1: So the piece really has much more of a cybersecurity focus,
Speaker 1: which is legit. I mean, that's understandable both for the
Speaker 1: publication and for the actual issues. Because a significant amount
Speaker 1: of bot traffic does relate to malicious intent, whether that
Speaker 1: is to spread misinformation or perpetuate malware across networks. That
Speaker 1: is a big thing to be worried about. But I'm
Speaker 1: also generally worried that we're rapidly reaching a point where
Speaker 1: the stuff that is actually generating content is going to
Speaker 1: be making that not for people, but actually for other bots.
Speaker 1: If bots are making up the majority of the traffic,
Speaker 1: then they're going to be a feedback loop of bots
Speaker 1: making stuff for bots, and that can mean that over
Speaker 1: time we start to encounter content that's deviating significantly from
Speaker 1: what you know, human beings would care to consume. It's
Speaker 1: a weird thought, right that you could go on and
Speaker 1: be like none of this makes sense or is at
Speaker 1: all compelling or interesting, But it's because it wasn't made
Speaker 1: for you. It was made for where all the traffic's
Speaker 1: coming from, which is from other bots. That's a weird
Speaker 1: thing to think about. But here's the crazy thing is
Speaker 1: that we may not have to wait too much longer
Speaker 1: to actually see that start to unfold. So if you
Speaker 1: think AI generative hallucinations are weird, now we're just getting started.
Speaker 1: Next up, the great halving of bitcoin is upon us having,
Speaker 1: as in cut in half. So the way bitcoin works
Speaker 1: is that the bitcoin network creates what is essentially a
Speaker 1: very hard math problem, and all the computers that are
Speaker 1: connected to the network that are trying to mine bitcoins,
Speaker 1: what they're really doing is they're trying to solve this
Speaker 1: very hard math problem. You could argue that really this
Speaker 1: just comes down to guessing a very very very large number.
Speaker 1: So upon solving the math problem, a couple of things happen. First,
Speaker 1: that solution verifies the current block of transactions on the blockchain,
Speaker 1: the one that's just being finished up, and then that
Speaker 1: block becomes the newest link in the blockchain. The computer
Speaker 1: or system of computers that's responsible for solving the problem
Speaker 1: receives some bitcoin as a reward. It's like your fee
Speaker 1: for solving this issue. And there is a finite number
Speaker 1: of bitcoin that will ever be issued, and so to
Speaker 1: control circulation and distribution, the system periodically has the number
Speaker 1: of bitcoins that are rewarded upon solving the math problem.
Speaker 1: For the last few years, if you were the one
Speaker 1: who solved the math problem, you would get six point
Speaker 1: two five bitcoins for each time you did that. Currently,
Speaker 1: bitcoin is trading it around sixty five thousand dollars per bitcoin,
Speaker 1: so that means if you solve it, you get around
Speaker 1: four hundred and six thousand dollars worth of bitcoin for
Speaker 1: solve that problem. And there's a new problem every ten minutes.
Speaker 1: So that's what drives bitcoin minors to do stuff like
Speaker 1: takeover old power plants in order to use their their
Speaker 1: sources to have these massive computer networks tackling these problems,
Speaker 1: which interestingly makes the problems even more difficult. Because the
Speaker 1: system is dynamic, it detects if people are solving problems
Speaker 1: too quickly, it makes the problems harder. So if you
Speaker 1: can make four hundred grand every ten minutes, then it's
Speaker 1: worth the expense to have this massive computer network running
Speaker 1: off incredible amounts of electricity. Well, soon that number of
Speaker 1: bitcoins awarded is going to go down to three point
Speaker 1: one two five per solution. So, assuming that the value
Speaker 1: of bitcoin remains in the general neighborhood of sixty five grand,
Speaker 1: which by the way, is not a sure thing, but
Speaker 1: we'll get to that, that would mean that now a
Speaker 1: solution would net you two hundred three thousand dollars, which
Speaker 1: is obvious, right. You just cut in half the amount
Speaker 1: that you would have made previously. So this raises some questions.
Speaker 1: Does this mean that the really huge mining operations will
Speaker 1: start to shut down? Because if you're making half as
Speaker 1: much per solution, you could reach a point where it
Speaker 1: costs too much to operate your mining operation compared to
Speaker 1: how much you make in solving these problems. And then
Speaker 1: there are other questions like what if the value of
Speaker 1: bitcoin itself changes? Well, if the value of bitcoin goes up,
Speaker 1: then it might very well mean that it's still worth
Speaker 1: it to use as much electricity as some countries do
Speaker 1: in a full year. We've seen the value of bitcoin
Speaker 1: fluctuate quite a bit this week, like even more than
Speaker 1: it usually fluctuates, which is already a lot, but it's
Speaker 1: still hard to say where things ultimately are going to go.
Speaker 1: I will say that bitcoin's value has grown way more
Speaker 1: than I thought it would back when it was still
Speaker 1: trading at around twenty thousand dollars per crypto coin. After
Speaker 1: it had its kind of crash, I was like, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know if we're ever going to see it
Speaker 1: go up as high again, but we did. It got
Speaker 1: higher than it had ever been before. However, it's also
Speaker 1: not as valuable as what some evangelists were predicting last
Speaker 1: year when they said it was going to hit one
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars per bitcoin before twenty twenty three was over.
Speaker 1: That did not happen. So I guess what I'm saying
Speaker 1: is that no one really knows where it's going to
Speaker 1: go from here. No one knows if it's going to
Speaker 1: keep going to the moon and continue to feed this
Speaker 1: cycle of crazy bitcoin mining operations, or if it's going
Speaker 1: to level out or even start to dip and thus
Speaker 1: change that nature. Nobody knows. If someone tells you otherwise
Speaker 1: that they definitively know where it's going to go, they're
Speaker 1: probably heavily invested in cryptocurrency. They're probably trying to get
Speaker 1: other people to buy in to cryptocurrency because that protects
Speaker 1: their investment, right, Like, if more people are interested in it,
Speaker 1: and more people are investing in it, it drives the
Speaker 1: value up and their own investment increases by comparison, I
Speaker 1: put this for like all of the crypto community. By
Speaker 1: the way, if you run into someone who is extremely
Speaker 1: passionate about the crypto community, it's not a hard and
Speaker 1: fast rule, but chances are they're in pretty deep. Like
Speaker 1: they've invested in that, and so their investment only pays
Speaker 1: off if the value increases, and the value increases only
Speaker 1: if enough people share that same belief that the value
Speaker 1: is greater. If people lose confidence in it, then the
Speaker 1: value goes down and then you start losing money on
Speaker 1: your investment. So I always view anyone who is really
Speaker 1: a hardcore cheerleader of the crypto community with some skepticism. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're going to take another quick break. When we come back,
Speaker 1: I do have a couple more news items I want
Speaker 1: to talk about, but first let's take another break to
Speaker 1: thank our sponsors. Okay, We've got a few more news
Speaker 1: stories to cover before we close out today. Google is
Speaker 1: making an interesting or organizational change within the company. They
Speaker 1: are combining departments focused on Android and Google Chrome. So
Speaker 1: these are software focused departments in other words, with Google's
Speaker 1: hardware division, so they're integrating the two, and the purpose
Speaker 1: of making this change is to create tighter integrations with AI.
Speaker 1: Of course I could have put this with the AI stories.
Speaker 1: I didn't think about that. So this does continue a
Speaker 1: trend in which Google has leaned on its Pixel series
Speaker 1: of Android phones to feature the company's various AI implementations.
Speaker 1: So I think we're going to see that continue and
Speaker 1: become more apparent with future Pixel releases, probably not this year's,
Speaker 1: but maybe like a couple of years down the line. Now,
Speaker 1: what I'm really curious about is how this is going
Speaker 1: to affect Google's relationship with other hardware companies like Samsung.
Speaker 1: For example, Samsung makes some very popular Android phones, and
Speaker 1: by tying the Android department with the Google hardware departments
Speaker 1: so closely together, it makes me wonder if that's going
Speaker 1: to put other companies at a disadvantage when it comes
Speaker 1: to using Android. Right, Like, the idea of your purpose
Speaker 1: built hardware was made with this specific version of Android
Speaker 1: in mind. That's different than say, oh, here's a hardware platform,
Speaker 1: let's put Android on top of it. So I'm very
Speaker 1: curious to see how this affects those relationships. I'm wondering
Speaker 1: if it's going to cause some friction. Samsung is kind
Speaker 1: of going through its own crisis right now. I didn't
Speaker 1: really put this in the lineup, but right now that
Speaker 1: company has mandated a six day workweek, not for their
Speaker 1: regular staff, but for their executives executives. It's kind of
Speaker 1: a little bit of shot in freuda for those of
Speaker 1: us who are used to the rank and file having
Speaker 1: to work super duper hard while executives are off on
Speaker 1: their yachts or whatever or golf courses. In this case,
Speaker 1: Samsung executives will have to work either Saturday or Sunday
Speaker 1: in addition to their normal work week, because that company
Speaker 1: is currently going through a pretty rough time. But that
Speaker 1: has more to do with their semiconductor business, not their
Speaker 1: mobile hardware business. Anyway, I guess Google's decision really is
Speaker 1: understandable if you want to push the envelope of AI features,
Speaker 1: because then you really do need a tight integration between
Speaker 1: the software side and the hardware side to make sure
Speaker 1: that you can actually support the stuff you want to do,
Speaker 1: you need to have a lot more control over all
Speaker 1: the elements involved. And it doesn't really work for you
Speaker 1: to just build a solution that will hopefully work on
Speaker 1: whatever platform it ends up on. It's not going to
Speaker 1: be as good of a product as you could do
Speaker 1: if you had everything under your control. I'm just not
Speaker 1: sure how it's going to impact other companies that use
Speaker 1: Android operating systems. Maybe we'll see a branching Android where
Speaker 1: one version is what you would find on Google made
Speaker 1: hardware and one version is on everything else. That's possible.
Speaker 1: I haven't read anything about it, so it don't there's
Speaker 1: no guarantee that that's what's going to happen. Just thinking
Speaker 1: kind of off the cuff here and now to segue
Speaker 1: into our cut the cable segment. To be clear, this
Speaker 1: isn't about cord cutters getting rid of cable TV. All
Speaker 1: of that continues to be a big thing. Instead, this
Speaker 1: is about literal instances of physical cables being cut and
Speaker 1: the problems that arise because of it. So, first up,
Speaker 1: earlier this week here in America, four states Nevada, Nebraska,
Speaker 1: South Dakota, and Texas experienced nine one one outages. So
Speaker 1: For those of y'all not from the United States, nine
Speaker 1: to one one is our number for emergencies phone number,
Speaker 1: So as you can imagine, a nine to one one
Speaker 1: disruption is a really big deal because suddenly folks who
Speaker 1: are in need of help have a reliable line disrupted,
Speaker 1: they cannot reach the emergency services that they need. So
Speaker 1: what actually happened, Well, a telecommunications company called Lumen Technology
Speaker 1: is explained for at least some of these cases that
Speaker 1: a third party company quote physically cut our fiber d quote,
Speaker 1: and that this happened while that third party company was
Speaker 1: trying to install a light pole, so they were just
Speaker 1: trying to install this thing and in the process they
Speaker 1: cut through a telecommunications cable that caused this nine to
Speaker 1: one one outage, which is a powerful reminder of how
Speaker 1: our communications capability is still really dependent upon a lot
Speaker 1: of physical hardware. Right. It's easy to forget that because
Speaker 1: we've gone so cordless over the years, like it seems
Speaker 1: like everything just works by magic. But no, there's like
Speaker 1: physical equipment that's making all this work, and if that
Speaker 1: physical equipment is damaged or destroyed, we lose that connectivity. Now,
Speaker 1: I should also add that according to a representative from
Speaker 1: Lumen that particular cable would not have been responsible for
Speaker 1: any service in Texas. So the outage in Texas appears
Speaker 1: to be, at least based on what I could read,
Speaker 1: unrelated to the loss of service in those other states.
Speaker 1: So that's odd. It's a weird coincidence that it would
Speaker 1: happen in Texas as well. According to one thing I read,
Speaker 1: people in Texas were saying that it appeared to be
Speaker 1: a T mobile disruption and that you could still reach
Speaker 1: nine one one if you were using a landline or
Speaker 1: some other mobile company. So yeah, it's just odd that
Speaker 1: it seemed to coincide with this other outage that was
Speaker 1: due to a physical cable being cut. And the other
Speaker 1: story I wanted to talk about with cables getting cut
Speaker 1: happened in Sacramento, California. Someone cut an AT and T
Speaker 1: cable and disrupted internet service for the Sacramento Airport for
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of airlines, And as you might imagine,
Speaker 1: the disruption meant that tons of passengers and crew experienced
Speaker 1: very long delays as the various companies tried to find
Speaker 1: a solution. In the meantime, now, amazingly, no flights were
Speaker 1: actually canceled, but things did move at a much more
Speaker 1: deliberate pace, as airlines had to go back to some
Speaker 1: pretty old methods like handwriting out boarding passes and such.
Speaker 1: And according to sources who spoke with The New York Times,
Speaker 1: the damage to the cable happened about two and a
Speaker 1: half miles from the airport itself, and they based upon
Speaker 1: the nature of that damage, it looks like it was
Speaker 1: an intentional act of sabotage, though at the time I'm
Speaker 1: recording this, I don't have any information on any suspects
Speaker 1: or motive behind it. That was it. But now time
Speaker 1: for some recommended reading. So first up Mara vistaal and
Speaker 1: I apologize Mara for butchering her name, but of the
Speaker 1: New York Times, she has a piece titled A Trove
Speaker 1: of Byte Dance Records Mistakenly went public. Here's what they say.
Speaker 1: So her piece details and error made by a court
Speaker 1: that led to a bunch of files going public. And
Speaker 1: these files give a lot more information about the origins
Speaker 1: of Byte Dance and how they connect to an investment
Speaker 1: company headed by a conservative political donor named Jeff Yas
Speaker 1: I imagine Yaes is very much opposed to legislation that
Speaker 1: would either force byte Dance to divest itself of TikTok
Speaker 1: or to have the app outright band. Next up, John
Speaker 1: Broadkin at Ours Technica has a piece titled cops can
Speaker 1: force suspect to unlock phone with thumbprint US court rules.
Speaker 1: The question about how authorities are allowed to access things
Speaker 1: like locked phones or locked computers has come up several times,
Speaker 1: and it is a very tricky and sticky legal subject,
Speaker 1: not just a technical subject. So Broadkin's article explains how
Speaker 1: a particular set of circumstances could be seen as being legal,
Speaker 1: like the law would be well within its rights to
Speaker 1: compel you to unlock your phone, but under other circumstances
Speaker 1: it could be viewed as unconstitutional. Sometimes it almost feels
Speaker 1: like it's down to semantics. You need to read the
Speaker 1: article to get a full appreciation for it, because it
Speaker 1: does show exactly how tricky the situation is. Finally, Kate
Speaker 1: NIBBs at Wired has an article that's titled how one
Speaker 1: author pushed the limits of AI copyright. Now, you might
Speaker 1: remember previous news stories in which a judge ruled that
Speaker 1: in order for a work to be eligible for copyright
Speaker 1: at all, it has to be of human origin. This
Speaker 1: Wired article covers the story of an author named Elisa
Speaker 1: Shoop who wrote a novel with the assistance of chat
Speaker 1: GPT and Shoop's efforts to secure a copyright for that work.
Speaker 1: And it's pretty interesting stuff, and it does raise more
Speaker 1: questions about where's the line. At what point can you
Speaker 1: say a work is eligible for copyright protection? And in
Speaker 1: which case would you say no, that's too much, Like
Speaker 1: do you actually have a hard and fast rule of
Speaker 1: how much material can be generated by AI versus a
Speaker 1: human before you get to a point where you say
Speaker 1: copyright is or isn't you know? Valid? Really fascinating kind
Speaker 1: of problem to think about, and it is going to
Speaker 1: be a problem, like it's a problem now, but it's
Speaker 1: going to be a bigger problem the more advanced this
Speaker 1: AI gets. So yes, those are some articles that are
Speaker 1: well worth your time if you're looking into reading some
Speaker 1: other tech news or tech opinions, I recommend those And
Speaker 1: I hope you are all well and I will talk
Speaker 1: to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio product.
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